


The Man of My Dreams

by tawg



Series: The Dangers of Dating a High School Principal [9]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Avenger Clint, Domesticity, M/M, Principal Coulson, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, Scars, Sewing, Tattoos, mild post-battle care, sexual activity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:30:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint enjoys a nice, lazy day with his boyfriend. Right up until it all goes horribly wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This instalment has multiple chapters.

Phil Coulson slept on his side, with his cat curled up behind his knees. At three in the morning, when Clint was freshly bandaged and still achy from a battle against horse-aliens (not to be confused with alien horses), it was a soothing sight. He walked softly into Phil’s bedroom, intending on getting a glance at Phil’s face before heading back into the lounge area and napping on Phil’s sofa until daylight, but Mittens the Second heard him coming and backed away from him, her eyes glowing in the dim light of Phil’s apartment. The movement woke Phil, who froze when he saw the dark shape in the room, then relaxed when he recognised Clint.

“Hey,” he said, his voice warm and sleepy.

“Hey,” Clint said back. Mittens darted under the bed, and Phil scooted back, making room for Clint to sit on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” Clint said softly. 

“S’okay,” Phil replied, already snuggling back into his pillow. “I won’t be up for long.” Clint huffed a laugh at that, and picked at his pants. Or Tony’s pants. Or, more accurately, what was left of Tony’s pants. They were definitely the worse for wear. “Mm,” Phil said, attracting Clint’s attention once more. “Are you going to sit there all night, or join me?”

Clint stared down at Phil. “You want me to sleep in here?”

“Do you sleep?”

“Well, yeah.”

“The bed’s a lot more comfortable than the couch.”

The bed was also warm, and had Phil in it. It was not a proposition to turn down. Clint stripped out of his ruined attire and by the time he was done Phil had shuffled to the middle of the bed, giving Clint the warm patch. Clint’s heart melted at the consideration. (Natasha, who he shared sleeping space with on a semi-regular basis, growled at him whenever he tried to mooch some of her body heat.) 

Clint lay on his back, but the graze on the back of his right shoulder throbbed and he rolled onto his side, facing the door to Phil’s bedroom. Phil pressed up against Clint’s back and draped a warm arm around Clint’s middle. Clint was pleasantly surprised that Phil was a cuddler. He had a few issues with being the little spoon, but he was sore, and tired, and warm, and comfortable, and he swiftly fell asleep.

Clint spent the next day observing Philip Coulson in his natural habitat. He learned that Phil got up early. Even on Sundays. Even when he had a near-naked archer in his bed.

“Ten more minutes,” Clint whined.

“Tempting,” Phil said, pressing a kiss to the back of Clint’s head. “But you’re bleeding on me.”

“It’s how I mark my territory,” Clint mumbled, hugging a pillow to his chest. Phil sat up, patted Clint on the hip, and got out of bed without a backwards glance. Clint dozed off again, and woke up when Phil came back, armed with two coffees and a tube of antiseptic cream. Clint was annoyed to have missed Phil changing from his cotton sleep pants and tee into kahki pants and a long-sleeved shirt, but being served coffee in bed was such a novelty that it more than cancelled out.

Phil sat down beside Clint and uncapped the tube. “This looks inflamed,” he informed Clint as he smeared cream on the graze on Clint’s shoulder. 

“Hng,” Clint said into his mug of coffee. He was lying on his stomach with his chest propped up on a pillow, and Phil sat cross-legged beside him. The graze felt hot but not itchy, and the cream seemed to soothe it nicely. Clint was more invested in convincing Phil to crawl back into bed again. “It’s fine,” he said. “I would have gone to my medical check up if it was bad.” He rolled his shoulder as Phil recapped the tube. The muscle felt sore, but that probably had more to do with Clint falling out of a tree than the graze.

“It looked like you had a fun night,” Phil said, reaching over to snag his own coffee off the bedside table.

“Mm, it was good,” Clint said, relaxing as Phil pulled the blankets up to cover his back. “Right up until our date got crashed.”

“I was talking about your adventures in the park.”

Clint considered the park incident. He’d snuck away during the cleanup, but he’d seen Captain America feeding buttered popcorn to a horse-alien, and Natasha had been pulling barbs out of the Hulk’s side. Because horse-aliens apparently had some very messed up defence mechanisms that included barbed skin. Hulk had tried to pick one of the aliens up, and had been left with some nasty looking spines sticking out of his giant palms. Clint had been lucky – one had brushed past him without doing too much damage and he’d managed to shoot it in the ass. They were hard to catch, but at least they made good targets.

“The park wasn’t quite as much fun,” Clint said. “Though the bit after the park? With the bed and you? That part was pretty good.” Phil ruffled Clint’s hair affectionately, and Clint grinned. “Do you really want the gory details?” Clint asked. 

Phil had grabbed Clint’s pants off the floor after administering his minor dose of first aid, and had pulled a small sewing kit out of his bedside table. “No need,” he replied as he fingered a tear in Clint’s pants. “I watched the news while you were napping.”

“Was it filled with wonderful and flattering accounts of my bravery?”

Phil made a thoughtful humming noise. “I wouldn’t exactly say that. It might be more accurate to say that you weren’t mentioned at all. But there was a cute clip of the Hulk trying to pat one of the horses.”

Clint snorted a laugh. “I’ll let him know that you think he’s cute.”

Phil smiled as he threaded a needle with neat, certain movements. “Of course, that wasn’t anywhere near as cute as the way you stole both pillows and then wonderfully and bravely snored throughout the small hours on the morning,” he replied.

“It’s a crucial duty,” Clint said seriously. “And I do not snore.” Phil patted Clint’s butt affectionately, and then started on mending the worst of the tears. “You don’t have to,” Clint said, suddenly feeling awkward. “I can get them fixed.”

“I can at least mend them so you don’t get arrested for indecent exposure on your way home,” Phil replied.

“They’re not even really my pants,” Clint continued. 

“You looked good in them,” Phil returned levelly.

Clint looked at the rich material. It had lost its shine in places, and there was an impressive grass stain covering the seat of the pants. But the tear across one thigh was slowly being pieced together, and when Phil turned the pants right-side-out to check on his progress, the mend was barely visible. Pepper would notice, obviously. But Clint could probably convince Tony that the pants had been like that when he’d found them.

“You’re pretty good at that,” he commented.

“My dad was a tailor,” Phil replied. 

“Wow,” Clint replied, legitimately impressed. “I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything tailored in my life. Not regular clothes, anyway. And between you and me, most of the other stuff is off the rack.”

Phil smiled. “If I knew how to make a suit, and it weren’t bad luck to make clothing for your partner, I’d offer to make you one.”

Clint grinned. “Well, it’s the thought that counts. Did your dad have a shop or something? What was it like growing up as a tailor’s son?”

Phil tested his work and then snipped the thread, before moving on to fixing a split seam. “He ran a store with my uncle, though they closed it down while I was in the navy. My uncle has a video store. Well, it’s a DVD rental place now.” Phil frowned as he loosened the tension of his stiches a little. “I haven’t heard much of what anyone’s been doing for a few years.”

“You don’t go and visit your family?” Clint asked, watching Phil’s hands.

“I haven’t been to visit in,” Phil paused for a while, trying to pinpoint his last trip home. “It’d be about seven years,” he said at last. He snipped the thread again and then smoothed out Clint’s pants, examining his handiwork. Clint could tell that Phil wasn’t exactly proud of his efforts, but Clint was blown away by stitches that were all the same length, and he made sure he looked every bit as impressed as he felt.

“Do you want breakfast?” Phil asked as he folded Clint’s pants. He placed them at the end of the bed and stood up again, stretching. “I can do toast, or more coffee.”

“I’ll stick with the coffee,” Clint said. “I know your feelings on toast in bed.”

Phil paused in the doorway. “You’re a keeper,” he said fondly before heading to his kitchenette. “Snoring and all.”

They spent the morning in bed. As much as Clint would not have minded at all if that had been a euphemism, he wouldn’t have traded on the reality of lazing around with his cheek pressed to Phil’s thigh as Phil sat with his back to the headboard, reading through a small stack of articles with a highlighter held between his teeth and his free hand scratching idly at the top of Clint’s spine. Clint suspected that when Phil became engrossed he may have forgotten that Clint was not, in fact, a very large and hairless housecat. But Phil’s short fingernails felt good against Clint’s warm skin, and he wasn’t about to complain. 

After each article was put to one side, Clint would ask what it had been about. He’d always assumed that teachers learned to be teachers and then that was it as far as it all went. It turned out that there was a lot going on behind the scenes – research into education, and education on education, and teaching people how to educate educators. There were debates on what to teach and how to teach and who to teach.

“Did it ever occur to these people to just shut up and teach?” Clint asked after a short rant on Phil’s part about the potential risks of a proposed response to student profanity. “Wait, was that a really offensive thing to say?”

“Maybe the Avengers should quit dealing with small things like terrorism and state security and just save the world already?” Phil returned, running his fingers through Clint hair.

“Hey, I am all for less state security. I have to wear my state security uniform and I’m not allowed to talk to anyone in case I offend a dignitary again.”

Phil huffed a laugh, and ran his nails across Clint’s scalp. Clint considered learning how to purr, because mumbling, “Mmm, s’nice,” into Phil’s thigh didn’t do justice to his feelings on the matter.

“We all just want to make things better,” Phil said. “Improve quality and efficiency and outcome. But you’re right – the further into education academia you go, the more you leave the classroom behind.”

“Why don’t you just ask the kids what they want?”

“Because the kids want ice cream for lunch and a school roller derby team,” Phil replied drily.

Clint grinned. “Hell, if I’d had those things I might not have dropped out.”

Phil started pressing his thumb into the muscle to one side of Clint’s neck, and Clint shifted happily to give him more access. “Is it true you ran away to the circus?” Phil asked.

“Yup. There was an elephant and everything. Got over that clown phobia real quick, too.”

Phil seemed to consider this. “I think an elephant might be cheaper than school-funded roller derby,” he said after a while.

“Elephant start-up cost isn’t too bad,” Clint agreed. “But the vet bills will kill you. And have you ever tried to take an elephant for a walk? If you want a circus animal, you can’t go past a big snake.”

“I didn’t think snakes were an integral part of the circus.”

“Oh yeah,” Clint replied. “Tattooed lady needs a snake. And snake charmers. Can’t have a snake charmer if you don’t have snakes. Well, you can, but it’s not nearly as impressive.” Phil huffed a laugh, and Clint wrapped an arm tightly around Phil’s thigh. “And dead snakes in jars. I don’t know what it is, but kids love dead snakes in jars. We had a Feejee mermaid, which was the front half of a skinned rabbit with no ears, attached to half a snake. Put a light under it and it was the creepiest thing. I fucking loved it.”

“Sounds like a lot of fun,” Phil said, lightly massaging Clint’s unscathed shoulder.

“Yeah,” Clint said, his grin fading a little. “It had its good moments. But tell me more about the exciting life of reading articles and then going to principal camp and talking about them.”

“We used to make a bonfire from the angry petitions from parents that we received throughout the year, and make smores. But then campfires were classed as destructive behaviour and national nutrition requirements were implemented for all school-related activities. So now we sit quietly and eat crackers.”

“Sounds like quite the party.”

“Oh yes,” Phil said seriously. “We rock out.”

On the nightstand, Clint’s buzzcomm vibrated. “Ugh, pass that here?” Phil handed the little block of plastic over. It was about the same size as a cigarette lighter, and Clint used his thumb to press a button on the end and hold it down. “They’ve just noticed I’m missing,” he explained. “Or more likely, they noticed last night and figured I’d be passed out somewhere.” He removed his thumb and showed the buzzcomm to Phil. 

“I carry this at all times,” he explained. “Or I should. It boosts the comm signal so the earpieces work over long distances, and has GPS and that kind of junk. This black button? That’s the ‘okay’ button. They buzz me to ask if I’m still alive, and if I don’t hit that button within fifteen minutes they send someone out to look for me. It used to be a four minute window, but they kept busting in on agents in the shower. The white one on the other end is the emergency button. If we’re ever together and something happens, you dig this out of my right pocket and you hold down the white button. Someone will come and get you as soon as they can.”

“Who buzzes you?” Phil asked. “Do you have a boss or a line manager?”

“Kinda? All agents have a line manager. But specialists or assets have a handler, who is the unholy mix of a babysitter, a boss, and a sadist.”

“And you have a handler?” Phil asked.

“Uh, no. I did. I’ve had a bunch.” Clint pasted a grin on his face, making sure he looked proud of scaring handlers off. “They never stick around for long, so now people just pass messages to me through the Avenger’s _au pair_. And before that they just shoved notes under my door.”

“Sounds like a very high tech system,” Phil replied.

“Oh yeah, nothing but the best,” Clint agreed. “But this little thing here works all over the world and never has to be recharged. And I don’t have to buy credit for it.”

Phil picked up the buzzcomm carefully and examined it. “Neat,” he said. “But how do you check your e-mail on it?”

Clint snorted and snatched it back. “You know, not everyone needs to check their e-mail every hour, on the hour.”

“Not everyone has staff who are too lazy to call and send e-mails instead,” Phil returned.

“I bet they’re too scared to call you,” Clint replied, tossing the buzzcomm back onto the nightstand. “You’d probably use your disappointed principal voice on them.”

“And that’s clearly terrifying,” Phil returned.

“Have you _heard_ that voice?” Clint asked. “I hear you use it on other people and I start questioning my life choices and worrying that I look like a hoodlum.”

Phil laughed. “You don’t look like a hoodlum.”

“Pepper tells me I look like a hoodlum,” Clint replied. Pepper, upon finding out that Clint had a boyfriend who wore ties without being bullied into them, had vetoed a large portion of Clint’s Stark Tower wardrobe, which was mainly non-uniform. The set of drawers in his SHIELD accommodation were filled with tactical uniforms, combat uniforms, training uniforms, and specialist uniforms, with socks and underpants crammed into any leftover space. Clint was down to one hooded jacket, and it had the SHIELD logo on both sleeves and was designed for arctic conditions. He just wasn’t sure he could pull off a giant fluffy hood while riding on the subway.

“If that’s true, then hoodlums are getting very handsome,” Phil replied. “Even when they track blood and soil through my bed.”

Clint pushed himself up onto his elbows and inspected the white sheet under him. It was littered with fine dust, some tiny blood smears, and small bits of bark. “But the important thing,” he said, “is that there are no crumbs.”

“Come on, hoodlum,” Phil said, getting up despite Clint’s protests. “We can shower and then go get lunch.”

Clint sulked for a while before admitting that a shower did sound like a very good idea. His decision to move was also helped along by Phil stripping the bed while Clint was still stretched out on it. Warm beds lost some of their appeal once the pillows, blankets, and sheets were removed from the equation.

Clint helped Phil remake the bed with clean sheets, though since Clint was wearing nothing but his socks and underpants he suspected he may have been a bit of a distraction. Considering he paused at every opportunity to strike poses and make ‘come hither’ eyes in Phil’s direction, he certainly hoped that he was at least a little distracting. Phil gave every sign of ignoring him, but there was a small smile on his face that Clint felt he could take the credit for.

Phil’s bathroom was surprisingly large, given the size of the rest of the apartment. It made Clint’s closet-sized arrangement at SHIELD look small, without crossing over into plain overindulgence. While the shower at Stark tower was a life-changing event, it had taken Clint twenty minutes to figure out how to turn the damn thing on. And that was with JARVIS helping him. 

Phil had a deep bath and a shower stall with frosted glass sides, and the fittings in the bathroom were neat and angular. A Crosstown High Snowmen mug with a broken handle sat on the sink, enjoying a new life as a shaving soap and brush holder. Clint liked that detail, the way it added a little warmth and personality to the room. He also liked the way Phil had turned the shower on and started stripping down while the water heated up.

“So, when you said _we_ should shower...”

“You’re welcome to go after me,” Phil said, unbuttoning the front of his pants. “I don’t want you to feel pressured or-”

Clint was already under the spray, his underpants shimmied off and tossed over his shoulder. He hissed when the hot water hit his shoulder, but it was a good feeling. Clint had no problems with the sharp sting of raw skin; it was when things started going numb that he got concerned. Phil stepped into the shower behind him, pressing up against Clint to reach past him and grab the soap. Clint started to turn, but Phil ran the bar of soap across the back of Clint’s shoulders and Clint decided that shower makeouts could wait for a few moments, at the very least.

“This is nice,” he said softly as Phil ran firm, soapy hands down his back. Phil dug his thumbs into the hard muscle at either side of the base of Clint’s spine, and Clint groaned shamelessly. He braced his forearms on the wall of the shower, and closed his eyes to the spray. Phil had good hands, warm and strong, and he paused every now and then to slick them up with more soap. Clint had never encountered the mix of spontaneous massage and thorough cleaning before, but he was very much a fan. When it came to the graze on his shoulder, Phil cleaned it with light circular motions of his fingertips.

“This doesn’t look so good,” Phil said over the noise of the spray.

“It’s fine,” Clint replied as he turned around. “It hardly even hurts anymore.” He pulled Phil close and kissed him, open-mouthed and messy, and with the shower raining on them both there was a slickness to the press of their bodies that Clint was very interested in capitalising on. Phil eased away just enough to run his soap-slick hands up over Clint’s chest, going against the grain of the sparse hair there and then stroking down the sides of Clint’s torso. They were both hard, but Phil seemed focused on the task of getting Clint clean and Clint liked the lazy way Phil contemplated his body, eyes roaming over naked skin and hands following the same path. 

Phil cleaned Clint’s arms, his fingers curling around the backs of Clint’s elbows and his thumbs stroking firmly against the curves of Clint’s biceps. He smoothed down the hair along Clint’s forearms and then took each of Clint’s hands in turn, washing dirt from the grooves in the skin and the cracks around his calluses. When he was satisfied, he bit playfully at the fleshy base of Clint’s thumb, and it was one of the most oddly arousing things Clint had ever encountered, pulling a breathy little gasp from him, and the small, cunning smile Phil gave in response made Clint positively ache.

Clint made an embarrassing noise when Phil sank to his knees, and it turned into a groan when Phil reached for the bar of soap and made a show of cleaning Clint’s left thigh. “You’re a wicked man,” he said, falling back against the shower wall, shivering at the cool tiles against the hot skin of his back. Phil smiled to himself, and dedicated himself to ensuring that Clint had the cleanest body in the whole city, picking up one foot at a time and cleaning between Clint’s toes, rubbing his hands over the tightness of Clint’s Achilles’ tendon and then up the back of his calf, scrubbing his short fingernails over the hardness of a kneecap. It was still a good image, Phil wet and hard and on his knees, his hair falling down over his forehead and his eyelashes clumping together in the spray. There was some colour at Phil’s left calf, mostly obscured by the way Phil knelt, sitting back on his feet. Clint opened his mouth to ask about it, but Phil looked up at him, his hands resting on Clint’s thighs and his smile a little coy. Clint’s dick jumped, and Phil dropped his gaze to it, shifted one hand to wrap it around the base of Clint’s cock.

Clint bit his lip as Phil mouthed at the head of his cock, as he pulled back and licked along the length. He put his hands on Phil’s shoulders, moved one to cup the side of his face and felt the way Phil’s jaw worked, widening as he took Clint all the way in and then easing as he pulled back, relaxing as he pulled away and licked at the head. Clint didn’t have the words to explain the things Phil did to him, the way his chest ached in the best kind of way when he saw that Phil was still hard, was hard and hot and wanting, and completely ignoring that in favour of swallowing Clint down, of licking and stroking and pulling a wide range of noises out of Clint that would have been embarrassing if Phil hadn’t seemed so pleased by every single one. 

Clint came hard, his grip on Phil’s shoulder stiff and desperate and his head thrown back, spray from the shower falling into his open mouth and through it all Phil kept his mouth on Clint’s cock, worked him through his climax and licked him clean with a gentle attention to detail that made Clint shudder. 

Phil didn’t have a chance to get to his feet before Clint was on him, dropping down and smashing one knee hard on the tiled floor, pushing Phil back and kissing him, hard and needy, licking the taste of himself out of Phil’s mouth and sucking the bitter flavour from Phil’s tongue. Clint didn’t ease up as he manhandled one of Phil’s legs across his lap. Phil was braced back on his hands and Clint had one hand planted firmly on the wet tiles by Phil’s left hip, the other wrapped around Phil’s dick and jacking him with a desperate need to hear Phil make those same sounds, to hear him pant and groan and bite off curse words before they fell past his lips and say Clint’s name, say it over and over as Clint bit at Phil’s jaw, as he sucked hard kisses at the base of Phil’s throat and adored the way Phil clutched Clint’s bicep and dug his fingers into the muscle with a bruising grip as Clint marked him.

It was fast and messy, and the way Phil rolled his hips up into Clint’s grasp made him wish that he were already hard again, that he could grind against the fluid motions of Phil’s body and press hardness against hardness, press Phil back into the wet floor of the bathroom and bite messages of adoration along the muscle of his chest, the lines his ribs, the skin of his stomach. Press his lips and his tongue against the red scar that sliced down Phil’s left thigh, fresh and fragile, the skin knitting together even after the stitches were gone.

Phil’s breathing grew rough as Clint worked his cock. The muscles of his thighs tightened and he shifted his grip from Clint’s arm to the back of Clint’s neck, holding their faces close together as he gasped with each twist of Clint’s wrist. Phil came with his eyes closed and his mouth open, and Clint bit at Phil’s lower lip as he spilled over Clint’s hand, licking up each sound that tumbled between Phil’s teeth.

“You’re incredible,” Clint breathed, and Phil gave a small, huffed laugh of disbelief before pulling Clint close for a slow and languid kiss under the warm spray of the shower. “Incredible,” Clint repeated when they eased away. “And you’re inked,” he added, before yanking Phil’s leg up for closer inspection. 

Phil slipped from the sudden shift in position, his back knocking the door of the shower cubicle open and then thudding against the floor. “What a romantic ending,” he said, sprawled on the tiles with a complete lack of elegance as Clint inspected his calf.

“I’m the worst boyfriend ever,” Clint said. “How did I not notice before?”

“It was dark,” Phil replied. “And you had more pressing concerns.”

“No jokes,” Clint said firmly.

Phil stared up at the ceiling as Clint inspected his tattoo, his body spread out onto the bath mat and his hands folded behind his head. After a moment he stretched an arm out and snagged a towel, and started drying himself as Clint ran his fingers over the red and blue design on the outside of his leg. Eventually he kicked Clint in the chest and pulled his leg free.

“Right,” Clint said, noticing their surroundings. “Sorry.”

Phil got to his feet and wrapped his towel around his waist, before reaching over and shutting the water off. “I’m choosing to be flattered that you find my body so enthralling,” he said with a smile that was both amused and exasperated.

“Very enthralling,” Clint said, rising from his crouch. “I may have to devote a lot of time studying it.”

“Will you now?” Phil inquired, passing a spare towel to Clint.

“I’m afraid so,” Clint replied seriously. “Days. It may even take weeks.”

“That is a lot of study,” Phil said absently. He had glimpsed his reflection and was pulling a face at the love bite Clint had given him low on his neck.

“As a professional educator, I can only assume that you’ll be supportive of my commitment to learning,” Clint said as the dried his hair.

“I suppose it is my duty,” Phil replied with a heavy sigh, turning away from the mirror. “For the sake of learning.”

“You’re very generous,” Clint said, before leaning in and pressing a kiss against the corner of Phil’s mouth. “Maybe not your defining feature, but definitely worth noting.”

“Oh? And what would be my defining feature then?” Phil asked, raising an eyebrow at Clint.

Clint dropped the towed and put his hands on Phil’s hips, pushing him out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. “Well, you have a lot of candidates,” Clint said. Phil twisted away from him and headed to a set of drawers. Clint frowned when Phil threw a pair of track pants at him, the worn fabric hitting him in the face. “Although clearly ‘being naked’ isn’t one of them.”

“Lunch,” Phil said, tossing a t-shirt at Clint. “Getting lunch requires clothes.”

“Or we could do it the superhero way,” Clint replied, “and just order in pizza.”

“You really want pizza for lunch?” Phil asked.

“It’s one of the four food groups for crime fighters,” Clint said, flopping onto Phil’s bed and letting the clothes fall to one side. “The other three are caffeine, flavoured milk, and painkillers.”

“Speaking of, how’s your shoulder?” Phil asked as he ducked back into the bathroom to grab his clothes.

“Great,” Clint replied. “I can barely feel it over the sound of me stealing your phone and ordering pizza online.”

Phil sighed, and sat down at the end of his bed, his towel still tucked around his waist. “Okay. You and your naked body win this round.”

“We’ll try not to let the victory go to our head,” Clint replied as he typed Tony’s credit card details into the online ordering form. He patted the empty space beside him, and Phil moved to sit cross-legged in the middle of his bed, facing Clint. Clint tugged at Phil’s ankle, coaxing him to stretch his legs out, and Phil lay back, the two of them arranged head to toe. Clint tossed Phil’s phone onto a spare patch of bed and curled over onto his side, curling one hand around Phil’s knee and staring at his tattoo.

It was Captain America’s shield. His first one – the heater shield design with three stars along a strip of blue at the top, and red and white vertical stripes beneath it. It sat high on the outside of Phil’s calf, placed over the curve of muscle. Phil also had scars on his knees, signs that he’d spent his youth falling over at high velocity, and Clint ran a finger over the mark of pale skin that registered in his peripheral vision.

“So,” he said slowly. “Nice tattoo.” Phil laughed at him, and Clint tried to shake some of the envy out of his voice. “When did you get it?”

“Just after I left the Navy. Or got kicked out, if you want to be accurate.”

“You wanted to mark the occasion?”

“Hardly.” Phil pointed his foot, poking Clint in the forehead with his big toe, and Clint dipped his head to bite at Phil’s ankle in return. “Some of my friends took me out and we made a party of it. All navy boys. I know a few of them offered to speak at my tribunal in my defence, but they had me on the charge of being gay, and it occurred to me that hiding that side of me for the rest of my life wasn’t that appealing.”

“I can’t believe you got discharged for that,” Clint said, frowning. He wanted to be angry about it, but Phil spoke about it with no bitterness and Clint had learned long ago when to shut up a listen.

“That was the excuse,” Phil said. “It was political. There were some orders I wasn’t very good at following, and someone decided it would save a lot of trouble to get rid of me early than deal with me later on.”

“That’s awful,” Clint said.

Phil tapped him with his foot again. “It was smart,” he replied. “I got a general discharge, which is neither honourable nor dishonourable, and my commanding officer wrote me a reference letter. I actually came out if it quite well.”

“Tell me about the tattoo,” Clint prompted.

“Well, we went out drinking. All in our mid-twenties and very emotional in that hyper-masculine way that means not talking about it and manfully hugging in crowded bars. And, long story short, when I woke up late the next morning I was so hungover I thought I was going to die.”

“And you had a tattoo?”

“No. My friend Vinnie-”

“You had a friend called Vinnie?”

“I had two, but only one of them had shore leave at the time. Vinnie made the point that it was the _perfect_ time to get a tattoo since I was already sore and miserable.”

“Flawless logic.”

“So three of us dragged ourselves down to the local tattoo parlour, and Vinnie and Jim put up the cash for me to get inked by a woman who took a little too much pleasure in the way we cringed at loud noises.”

Clint chuckled. “So why the shield?” he asked, rubbing his thumb back and forth across the row of stars. “Did you read the comics as a kid?”

“Yes,” Phil replied. “But it wasn’t that.”

“What was it then?” Phil didn’t answer, and Clint propped himself up on one elbow. “I won’t laugh or anything,” he promised. “Or tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Phil’s expression shifted slightly, and Clint knew he’d hit the button. “I promise that I will not tell Captain America the long and drunken story of why my boyfriend has the stars and stripes tattooed on his body. Pinkie swear.”

Phil glanced at him, then reached out and linked his pinkie finger with the digit Clint was offering. “Captain America was an icon,” he said at last.

“An American icon,” Clint said. “I know.”

“A gay icon,” Phil clarified.

“What, really?”

“He stood up for equality for everyone during the war, no matter what their gender or race or history. So, with Steve Rogers as a dashing, vocal, and very single figure in history, it made sense to assume that he would support equal rights for the queer community as well. The comics became code for a lot of things in the gay military community-”

“Like what?”

“If I told you, I would have to kill you,” Phil said seriously.

“Come on, what? I promise that I won’t tell Steve, and that Tony Stark has probably already hacked into databases to find this stuff out.”

“What you were into,” Phil said vaguely. “Anyway, before the 1950’s general and undersitable discharges were lumped together and known as ‘blue discharges’, which was the military’s way of getting rid of anyone undesirable. Captain America had this line in the comics, ‘Nothing says freedom and equality like the red, white, and blue’. And so blue discharges were nicknamed ‘red, white, and blue’ discharges, pointing out the hypocrisy in protecting America but beating down the parts of America the military institutions didn’t approve of.”

“Wow,” Clint said. “That... that is so sarcastic that Steve would probably actually really like it. Once he stopped being sad about the whole thing.”

“This was back in the eighties, remember,” Phil said. “It was before ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, and we’ve already moved on from that. I’ve got no idea if those terms are still around.”

“I bet they are,” Clint said.

“They probably are,” Phil agreed. “The graffiti alone will be keeping it alive.”

Clint rested his head on Phil’s ankle, and ran his fingers over the tattoo again. It was a little faded, the black outline a little soft, but the design was still neat and clean and the colours had remained the right hue despite the passing of time. “It’s a good tattoo,” he said. 

“I’m fond of it,” Phil agreed.

“But if any of my teammates ask,” Clint said seriously, “it’s because you had a Hawkeye tattoo, and when you started dating me you were so embarrassed you had to cover it up.” 

“Of course,” Phil replied. “Because I have the Hawkeye logo committed to memory.”

“It’s a good logo.”

“I would definitely recognise it if I saw it on the street,” Phil said, nodding.

“Marketing did a good job with it.”

“It’s very handsome,” Phil agreed. “Handsome and stimulating.”

“I helped,” Clint said proudly. 

They lay in silence for a moment, their bodies curved towards one another. Clint was warm and comfortable – he was building some very happy associations with being in Phil’s bed – and felt like he could slip back into sleep without any cares. “It’s a target,” Clint said at last.

“I knew that,” Phil replied as Clint wrapped his arms around Phil’s leg, snuggling against his shin.

“With two crossed arrows kind of peeking out behind it,” Clint added.

“Exactly.”

“I’ll get you a shirt or something,” Clint mumbled against Phil’s leg.

“Why bother? I already have the tattoo.”

Clint laughed softly and let his eyes fall closed. He had spent nearly the whole morning in bed, and his body was telling him to take advantage of the opportunity to make a day of it. To relax and doze and let the warm tingling in his shoulder spread throughout his whole body. He felt like he could sleep for days, tangled up in Phil, and was considering throwing a leg over Phil’s torso when a knock at Phil’s door ruined that plan.

“That’ll be your pizza,” Phil said, pulling himself free. Clint watched from barely-open eyes as Phil discarded a towel (a good move) and then pulled track pants and a tee on (a less good move, in Clint’s completely unbiased opinion).

“Spoilsport,” he muttered as he dragged one of the pillows closer.

“ _Professional_ spoilsport,” Phil corrected as he walked out into the living area.

Clint had to admit that it had already been one of the better days of his life – spending the morning in bed, of his own free will, with someone who liked him, being petted. Then there had been the shower, and there were a lot of incredibly enjoyable moments there. Clint was going to be remembering that shower fondly for a long time, probably for the rest of his life. And then there had been the post-shower cuddling, learning more about Phil and his background, hearing his voice as he talked about things that he cared about. Phil was someone who was very much in control of his emotions and yet was not at all emotionless. Clint snuggled into a pillow that, even with a fresh pillow case, still smelled vaguely of Phil. 

It had been a perfect day, Clint reflected as he heard the front door open. Clint, who hadn’t had a real day off in several years, felt gorged on lazy normalcy. He basked in the knowledge that his Sunday with Phil wasn’t even half-over.

And then Clint heard a gasp, followed by the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint stumbled into Phil’s living room, having stuffed himself into the mended pants and armed himself with Phil’s alarm clock. He stopped short when he saw Phil lying face down on the scuffed floorboards, barefoot with his hands secured at the small of his back. Very unconscious, and surrounded by SHIELD agents.

“Stand down, Agent Barton,” Agent Sitwell said calmly.

Clint hesitated, uncertain and unsteady. He should have spent the morning stretching out his sore muscles, not lazing around. He watched as Phil was hauled up to his feet, his head hanging loosely between his shoulders. “Did I miss my curfew or something?” Clint asked.

Sitwell smiled, though he didn’t seem amused by the situation. “Get dressed,” he instructed. “Meet up with us at HQ.”

“Is that where you’re taking him?” Clint asked. Sitwell didn’t reply and instead turned his attention to the two agents doing a sweep of Phil’s apartment. Clint scowled – his boyfriend was being carried into the hallway, he was more than a little confused, and his shoulder was prickling in a distinctly unnerving way. “What’s going on?” he asked sharply.

Sitwell looked over at him with a tired frown. He was a good guy, but he was really an admin person rather than a field agent, and Clint got the feeling that his dealings with the Avengers wore him down more than they should. “Think you could put a shirt on for this conversation?” he asked. Clint rolled his eyes, but headed back into Phil’s bedroom and Sitwell followed him. Clint pulled on the t-shirt Phil had put out for him, and sat down on the bed to put his socks on.

“We got a ping,” Sitwell said, standing awkwardly with his hands in his pants pockets. “Last night. On your date.”

“What kind of a ping?” Clint asked.

Sitwell paused before answering. “An espionage ping. Agent Romanov recognised your… She recognised the man known to you as Philip Coulson,” he continued. 

Clint had one foot on the bed and his knee near his chin, pulling the laces of his boot tight. “I really hope this ends with ‘and we found nothing but Stark decided to punk you because he’s a dick’.”

Sitwell looked away, and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just on the retrieval team,” he said, a tired whine in his voice that underlined the message that he was just following orders. “This could all just be a precaution.”

“Where are you taking him?” Clint asked, tying the laces of his other boot.

“Base B,” Sitwell replied.

“Base B is not a precaution,” Clint said coldly as he stood up. He grabbed Phil’s sweater from the top of the dresser and stalked out of the room.

*

Base B was a tall building just off Times Square that held a number of SHIELD related offices, ranging from accounting to the research ethics board. It was where Captain America had been housed post-thawing and pre-waking. From the ground floors up, it was a brightly lit and handsomely designed hive of innocent organisation. The basement floors were a little more practical.

Phil would be in one of the basements. He would be waking up in a room with no windows and waiting for someone to find the time to ask him questions. It would be chilly, and brightly lit, and they would probably make him wait. Clint knew these things because he’d been in Phil’s position a few times himself. The urge to bust down and set things straight coiled through Clint and made him hot and twitchy with the need to do fast and furious things in the dark sublevels. But first, he had to go up.

Clint and Natasha stood side by side in the elevator. Clint had changed into his field uniform, suspecting that the mended pants wouldn’t hold up under what the afternoon had in store for him. He had Phil’s t-shirt on under the armoured vest, a statement of allegiance he suspected was all too obvious given the way Natasha had glanced at his chest and raised an eyebrow without comment. The elevator was slow, and Clint wanted their tense ride to be over already. Natasha was his friend. More than that, she was someone whose judgement he replied upon. She was also someone who had made him achingly angry. He watched the panel by the door, counting the floors to their destination.

When they were one floor away from the debriefing room, Natasha reached out and hit the emergency stop button. “Well?” she asked pointedly.

Clint stared ahead at the doors, trying to compose a response in his head. He skipped over ‘what the hell?’ and bypassed ‘how could you?’, because he knew that the answer to both of those questions would be ‘I was doing my job’. Clint often let himself be motivated by his emotions, and it was a method that worked for him. But Natasha didn’t have that drive and it was useless to resent her for it. 

“You liked him,” he said simply. She had given her approval. She had been encouraging. Clint couldn’t reconcile the idea of Natasha keeping suspicions of such severity to herself with the reality of her blunt honesty. Unless she had been setting him up for an inactivation.

“Yes,” Natasha replied. “That’s what tipped me off.” Clint frowned without looking at her, and he saw Natasha shift at the edge of his peripheral vision. “Look, Clint,” she said gently, which only served to put Clint on his guard, “people just aren’t that lucky in relationships. Especially you.”

He glanced over at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Natasha’s face was calmly expressionless as she reached out and hit the emergency stop button again, and the elevator jerked back into motion. “If this guy was everything you’ve been saying he is, do you really think he’d be with you?”

Clint clenched his jaw, and kept his response to himself.

*

Agent Hill was a stern figure, and her resting face rivalled Clint’s when it came to scaring their co-workers. Clint stared back at her from his seat across the table. He clashed with Hill on a regular basis – she was someone who knew the rule book backwards and expected it to be followed. Clint had more of a fluid approach to life; he was more at ease going around an obstacle and finding a new position than butting himself against it. He knew that it annoyed Hill to no end that he didn’t have a handler to micromanage him. He knew that she had recommended his removal from active status to Fury on several occasions. He knew that she hated his placement with the Avengers. 

And he knew that if she was leading the investigation into Phil, then his life was about to become very difficult.

“We need to know everything you’ve told him,” she said, looking down at him. She was standing and he sat. She asked questions and he answered. She was doing everything to put Clint on the defensive and he was too annoyed to bother with trying to even things out.

“I told him that I made myself sick eating Oreos last time I was in Thailand,” Clint replied. Agent Hill kept staring at him, waiting. She would make him sit there through the night if she had to, and every moment that Clint spent scowling at her was another moment that Phil would spend as a guest of SHIELD. Clint sighed heavily. “I told him that I don’t have a mobile phone because I follow _your_ stupid rules. I told him that I don’t have a handler because no one will put up with me. I told him how to use the emergency button on a buzzcomm.”

“What else?” Hill asked.

“Practically nothing,” Clint replied. “We spend more time talking about his job than mine.”

“But he knows you’re an Avenger.”

“Well, yeah,” Clint replied. “We met when I was doing the Hawkeye thing, mask and all. He knows that I get deployed overseas but I’ve never told him where. He knows that I’m a marksman but I’ve never talked about my gear.” Clint let his expression deepen into a scowl. “He knows that SHIELD are a little overeager when it comes to their investigations, but in all honesty he figured that one out on his own.”

“Have you spoken about your family?”

Clint blinked at her. _That_ question had come out of left field. “Mine? No.” 

“Has he asked you about your family?”

Clint shook his head. “No.”

“Has he asked you about your history?”

Clint paused and thought about it. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “We had the ‘tell me about yourself’ conversation a few times.”

“And?”

“And I told him that I made myself sick eating Oreos in Thailand,” Clint replied impatiently. “What’s this about?”

Hill stared at Clint for a long moment, giving no sign that she had any intention of cluing him in, but Clint waited her out. Clint was one of the few people who would prefer to be yelled at by Fury than endure a calm conversation with Hill – Fury played less games, and could generally be relied upon to find the humour in any situation.

“We have reason to believe,” Hill said at last, “that he was sent to gather information.”

“On me?”

“From you,” Hill corrected. 

“Information about what?” 

“Your brother.”

Clint stared at her without moving. He hadn’t heard from Barney for years. For longer than years – before he’d joined SHIELD. Barney had joined the army and that, as far as Clint knew, had been the last they’d seen of one another. “I’m probably really not the person to be talking to about that,” he said at last.

“You haven’t had any contact with your brother?”

“Not for a long time,” Clint replied. And even then Clint had never been an expert in the subject of his own sibling. If he had been then perhaps their fights might not have always blindsided him. It had taken Clint a little too long to realise that he and Barney didn’t trust each other. Even longer to realise that a lot of that had been his own fault. Thinking of Barney always made Clint re-contextualise his relationships. Why should he expect Agent Hill to put her faith in his abilities when his own brother hadn’t?

“Why go to all of the trouble of setting me up when a quick hack of the defence department would have more information than me?” Clint asked. “And why would anyone need the inside scoop on Barney anyway?”

“I suppose we’ll find out,” Hill replied.

Clint stared at her, looking for a tell and Hill stared right back, as frosty and firm as ever. “This just all seems needlessly elaborate,” Clint said at last. And it was. It was stupidly elaborate. Almost as stupid as the few undercover missions he’d been sent on. Clint knew that from a safe enough distance, regular stupidity could be mistaken for quiet genius. Clint didn’t believe that Phil was a spy for a single heartbeat. But the scenario itself...

“Your expert opinion on the matter has been noted,” Hill replied. “Agent Rogers and Mister Stark will escort you back to Stark Tower.”

“Will they also sit outside my door and make sure I don’t watch any tv after nine?” Clint asked with entirely false sweetness.

Hill frowned. “I think you should be treating this incident with the severity it deserves.”

“I think this incident is ridiculous,” Clint retorted. It was mostly true. Because Phil… The idea that anyone would waste their time on Clint just to get to Barney… Clint shifted his jaw. He was pretty certain it was an entirely ridiculous notion.

Agent Hill regarded Clint for a long moment, and then she uncrossed her arms and rested her hands on the back of the chair in front of her. “Agent Barton,” she started, then paused. “ _Clint_.” That sure got his attention. Hill was by no means comforting, but she softened her posture just enough to show that, under the uniform and the sick passion she had for following protocol, she was human despite all rumours to the contrary. “We all hit that crossroads where we start questioning what we do, whether we want to pack up and bail out. Don’t waste that decision on someone like Coulson.”

*

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Clint said after twenty minutes of silence. Avengers or not, they still had to deal with New York traffic like everyone else. The minutiae of the journey had passed Clint by. All he knew was the hot, tight shape of the backseat of a black car, the blue stiffness of Steve’s shoulders as he sat behind the wheel, the way Tony was hunched forward, one hand on his case at all times. The back doors of the car were locked and the confinement made Clint jittery. It had been a long time since Clint had been regarded with such suspicion. It made his skin prickle, made the graze across his shoulder burn.

“I didn’t say you did,” Tony replied as he watched Clint in the rear vision mirror. Tony was suspicious by nature, and Clint suspected that grounding one of his teammates had set off the wrong kind of alarms in Tony’s head. There were many reasons Clint refused to live at the tower full time, and Tony’s shifting moods were certainly on the list. 

Clint snorted. “You were sure thinking it loudly,” he said, because he was itching to blow off some steam and Tony could always be relied upon to rise to the challenge.

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Someone’s sure paranoid,” he said in that light tone of his that meant he was bubbling with destructive energy. “Does he seem paranoid to you, Cap?”

“Tony-” Steve said, a warning sigh, but Tony had twisted around in his seat, his posture awkward as he kept one hand on his case, and he stared at Clint with a grin that was gleeful Stark antagonism. “You know what, Cupid?” he said in a low voice. “Why don’t you tell me what else I think?”

“Tony-”

“You should be thinking that you’re the last person to look at me like I’m a screw up,” Clint shot back.

“Clint-”

“Uh, I’m not the one sleeping with the enemy,” Tony replied. 

Clint pulled his lips back in an expression that was more snarl than smile. “That’s because you’re too busy sitting on their laps and acting out your daddy issues.” Clint had an itch at the top of his spine and no patience for anymore bullshit. “The only reason your dick hasn’t gotten the team into trouble is because the bad guys like a challenge.”

“A challenge like you?” Tony asked, his voice low and quiet. “Someone so desperate for attention that he’ll throw himself after assassins just because they ask his name? Which is probably just as well, because you crushing on Natasha brought a lot more to SHIELD than you were ever going to.”

“Everyone at SHIELD is just counting down the hours until you die,” Clint ground out in response. “Your body won’t even be cold before they rip out what little of you has any real worth.”

Tony narrowed his eyes and smiled a sleek, confident smile that made Clint’s blood boil. “It’s all about ‘worth’ to you, isn’t it? Is that why you’re such an easy mark? All it takes is a pat on the head and a ‘well done, boy’ and you practically salivate. No wonder everyone’s out looking for the brother. If he can keep straight which side he’s meant to be playing for he’ll be twice as useful as you’ll ever be.”

“Don’t think you know jack about me,” Clint replied with the deep calm that came before great violence. “Don’t think you have any kind of authority to slap your labels on me.”

Tony’s nose crinkled slightly, his teeth white and sharp as he replied, “The only label on you is ‘desperate’.”

Clint’s reply was cut off by Steve taking a sudden and violent right-hand turn into a side street, throwing Clint against the passenger door and Tony against Steve’s shoulder. “What did I tell you both about wearing seatbelts?” he said sternly.

Tony pushed himself off Steve with a huff. “If you nearly killed us just so you can use the ‘gramps is so disappointed in kids these days’ voice-”

“Like your smart mouth wasn’t dragging you to an early grave anyway?” Steve shot back. “Both of you calm down or I swear to God I am turning this car around and taking you _both_ right back to SHIELD headquarters and it’s secure containment cells.”

Tony and Clint both settled themselves back into their seats. “I’m really regretting letting you watch sitcoms,” Tony grumbled. Clint didn’t trust himself to say anything, and kept his mouth firmly shut. There was a reason Steve was the driver when it came to SHIELD business. As well as being able to stay below the speed limit, he didn’t make empty threats. Clint met Steve’s stern gaze via the rear view mirror, and nodded once curtly.

Steve’s shoulders relaxed slightly, and Clint could hear his large hands adjusting their grip on the steering wheel. “Look, Clint,” he said gently, “It’s nothing personal.”

“Aside from the part where you made it personal,” Tony chipped in.

“It’s just a precaution,” Steve said, firmly ignoring Tony. “You just don’t have the best track record when it comes to making good judgements.”

Which was both something new and something that Clint already knew so very well. But his judgements had a habit of saving his teammates’ skin, and he was not going to allow Steve to drop that comment like it was something commonplace and unimportant. But Steve had already carried on, unaware of the blow he had dealt without even raising a hand.

“And your love life,” Steve shrugged one shoulder helplessly, “it really just follows that trend. If Natasha is right about this then he is clearly very good at what he does. But you need to _wake up_ and see what’s going on here.”

“Fury had him pegged since he met him,” Tony said bluntly. “It just took Natasha recognising him last night to get the ball rolling.”

“You probably saw the signs yourself,” Steve added. “You’re just not ready to wake up from the dream.”

“I don’t believe this,” Clint said flatly. “You’ve already made up your mind.” Which was typical Steve. His firm conviction was, in Clint’s mind, a mix of arrogance and ignorance. That’s why the Avengers needed Tony calling the shots as well. No one called Steve out on his assumptions quite as thoroughly as Tony did.

“How many guys have a taser that can take down a golem?” Tony argued. 

“From memory, him figuring that part out saved a lot of asses,” Clint returned.

“And it built up trust,” Steve said calmly. “It was a very well calculated move, but that’s all it was, Clint.”

“The emotional equivalent of fattening you up for the slaughter,” Tony contributed.

Steve frowned at Tony. “I wouldn’t have put it quite like that…”

Clint considered his options carefully. Everyone he would have appealed to for help had already shown they sided with SHIELD on this matter. The circumstantial evidence was building. Clint’s job was on the line, and he knew from experience that he just wasn’t good enough at anything else to make a life of it. He would be sacrificing a lot, everything, if he kept pushing. He finally nodded his agreement, and the tension in the car receded somewhat. “So,” he asked, letting himself sound every bit as exhausted as he felt, “what happens now?”

Tony and Steve exchanged a look. “Clint,” Steve said carefully, “you need to understand that we’re here in our capacity as Avengers.”

“The spangles were a bit of a giveaway there, Cap,” Clint replied tiredly. His shoulder was throbbing and his body was thrumming with pent up energy. He needed to pace himself.

“If you leave Stark Tower without the correct authorisation, you will be considered compromised and regarded as a threat to SHIELD security,” Steve continued.

“I understand,” Clint said with a submissive grimace. Then, when Steve had one hand on the key in the ignition and Tony was finally buckling his seatbelt, Clint twisted around, brought his legs up, and kicked at the window of the rear passenger door with all of his strength. It took several kicks, but his boots were strong and heavy, and he had all of the motivation he needed. Steve and Tony twisted and tried to restrain him, but while the serum had made Steve the perfect figure for fighting Nazis it had left him a little too big to move easily in the average four-door sedan, and Tony was tangled up in his seatbelt with the armour popping out of the case between his feet only complicating matters. Clint was twisting out of the window and dropping onto the asphalt before Steve even got his door open, and he had scaled a wall and slipped through a window mere moments after that.

The standard procedure following a (potential) emotional compromise of an agent was that the agent in question would stay away from the element of (proposed) compromise until the compromise was confirmed (or shown to be a false alarm). Hill had recited the procedure to Clint before handing him over to Tony and Steve, and Clint had nodded along and ‘yessir’ed at the right moments and verbally agreed that, one way or another, it was in everyone’s best interest that he stay out of everything until SHIELD concluded its investigation.

After all, these were his co-workers and his teammates. People he trusted his life with, whose instructions he followed with minimal question when it came to ending the lives of others.

But Phil was Clint’s boyfriend and Barney was Clint’s brother, and if there was any truth to the supposition that Clint was merely an avenue of information then he was damn well going to hear it from Phil himself.

Clint couldn’t outrun Captain America or Iron Man, but they were primary coloured figures who were easy to track, and Clint was very good at escaping notice. He stole a jacket from one apartment and worked his way through the building, slipping out a side door and then slithering through an open drain into the sewers. Maybe he was just proving every point Steve had made about his bad judgement, but he had nothing to lose. SHIELD was cut off to him and the Avengers wouldn’t help him. 

And really, Clint had no problem doing this by himself. He was looking forward to a private chat with Phil, and getting to the bottom of this mess. Thunder rumbled overhead.

*

Clint crawled through the air ducts of Base B, dropping down levels periodically until he was well below street level. He silently removed a ventilation grille in the ceiling and slithered through, lowering himself until he was hanging by his fingertips. He dropped to the floor with barely a sound and remained in a crouch for a moment, checking for the sound of running feet. He wasn’t foolish enough to think his destination would be a mystery, but he was at least hoping to avoid walking into a trap. 

Clint crept down the long, dim hallway lined with doors. Each door had a one-way mirror set in it, allowing the occupants to be observed without observing in return, and Clint moved quickly, peering through each one. He spotted Sitwell’s broad shoulders through one observation window, and could see the line of Phil’s arm beyond him, standing on the other side of the interview table. The cells in Base B didn’t have beds. Part of the novelty of staying there was figuring out how to sleep comfortably while in unofficial custody.

Clint was weighing up his options – retreat to a safe distance and wait for Agent Sitwell to leave before checking in with a borrowed security pass to talk to Phil (and probably rescue him), or check into the interrogation room while Sitwell was still in there and use the opportunity to get as much information from the two of them as possible (and possibly also rescue Phil) – when he heard a startled cry from inside the room, followed by a loud thump that was closely followed by a second and third. Decision made for him, Clint pressed the security pass against the electronic lock and then kicked the door open, making a loud enough noise to cause a brief interlude in the violence inside the interrogation room.

It was an effective manoeuvre and Clint stared dumbly at Phil, who stared back – on his feet and with one hand gripping the back of Agent Sitwell’s head. There was blood sprayed across the table and Clint was certain that none of it was Phil’s.

“So,” he said after a long pause. “You’re keeping well.” Phil was wearing the tee and track pants he’d put on to answer the door to his apartment nearly twelve hours prior. He had no shoes, no watch. There was no sign of his mobile phone, which Clint suspected Phil would see as a form of torture.

Phil had a strange expression on his face, a mix between guilty and embarrassed. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

Clint nodded, assessing the situation. “It looks like you’ve just beaten Sitwell’s nose out through the back of his head.”

Phil looked down at the man he had pressed against the table. “Maybe,” he conceded. Phil released his hold on Sitwell, and the agent slid to the ground, bloody and unconscious.

Clint searched for something to say. “You know, you’re setting a bad example for the other guests.”

“A horrible one,” Phil agreed as he crouched down and went through Sitwell’s pockets. “I’m even planning on leaving without settling the tab.” He found Sitwell’s security pass and held it between his teeth as he put both hands to work unholstering Sitwell’s gun and checking the ammunition.

Phil moved with quiet confidence, just as he always had, but the new setting made Clint wary. His body hurt, and he could feel a headache starting at the base of his skull. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” he said slowly.

Phil looked up from his crouch beside the prone body. “I’m getting out of here,” he said firmly.

Clint chose his next words carefully. “I just think-”

“I don’t care what you think,” Phil said with calm bluntness. “You can go to Hell for all I care.”

Clint shifted his feet into a more stable stance, his body reacting to his uncertainty as to how to handle Phil. “What?”

Phil shifted his jaw and rose to his feet – the gun in one hand and the pass in the other. “Clint, you’re a great guy and I really like you. But I’ve been drugged by your coworkers, dragged out of my home, detained, and now they’re talking about removing me to a secure location. I’m sorry, but this is just a level of commitment I’m not ready for.”

Clint blinked at Phil. He had assumed that Phil would be scared, not angry. He had made the foolish assumption that Phil would be desperate for Clint’s help. He hadn’t expected the annoyed line of Phil’s eyebrows, the way every tense line of Phil’s body sent the firm message to stay back. And he hadn’t expected the sick, sinking feeling in his own stomach at Phil’s words. “Are you breaking up with me?” he asked.

“Priorities,” Phil snapped. “I was _abducted from my home_. I’m sorry, but no one is worth this much bullshit, especially not you. I’m getting out of here. I have a school to run, and a cat to snuggle, and people who aren’t paranoid psychotics to spend time with.”

Clint watched as Phil walked to the door and pressed his ear against it, listening to the corridor beyond. He watched the way Phil moved, the precautions he thought to take. “Are you going to be writing up any reports when you get back to your nice, normal life?” he asked, bitterness creeping into his voice.

“There’s always reports,” Phil replied absently as he unlocked the door.

“Reports on me?” Clint asked.

Phil stopped, the door barely an inch open, and turned back to gape at Clint. “You can’t think any of this is real?” he asked, incredulously.

Clint shrugged. “They make a compelling argument,” he replied. “I’ve never known a principal who can disable a senior agent before.”

“And as a high school dropout I expect you’re an _expert_ on what goes on in the school system,” Phil shot back. “It’s easy to take someone down if they underestimate you. If the navy hadn’t beaten that into me, twenty years as a teacher would have.”

“Well maybe I am an idiot,” Clint replied hotly, “but there’s a lot going on here that makes _no_ fucking sense, which pisses me off like you would not believe, and it all seems to lead back to you. So, yeah, suspicious stuff like beating up my boss is going to get some damn comments.”

“You said you don’t have a boss,” Phil snapped back, yanking the door open. “For some _strange_ reason no one wants you around.”

There was a buzzing in Clint’s brain and the top of his back was burning. He pushed it to one side and did what he did best – he focussed on the target and waited for the moment. He followed Phil into the hallway and pulled the small pistol from his thigh holster. “I really don’t see how baiting me plays into your master plan,” he commented blandly as he tucked all of the hurt and rage Phil had stirred up in him back down under his skin, as he let the energy thrum through his veins. 

“There is no master plan,” Phil hissed. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I just really don’t want to die?” 

“If that’s true, you’re really good at it,” Clint shot back.

“Oh great,” Phil said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Now you’ve gone and jinxed me.”

Clint snorted a laugh, and regretted it the moment he saw the line of Phil’s back soften slightly. “This is such a fucking nightmare,” Clint said with a sigh.

“Tell me about it,” Phil replied. “I get kidnapped by the men in black and I’m not even wearing underwear.”

“Are they right about you?” Clint asked, because soon he was going to start helping Phil navigate his way through the maze of hallways and stairwells, and his body was too sore and tired and confused for him to even identify his gut feelings about Phil. “Are you with me to find out about my brother?”

Phil looked over his shoulder at Clint. “I didn’t even know you had a brother,” he said. There was honesty in his face, and the kind of anxious exasperation that was perfectly normal when events refused to play out according to expectations. 

But perhaps Phil was a very good actor. Perhaps Phil was anxious about being caught and exasperated that Clint wasn’t being duped quite so easily the second time around. Clint’s saliva was thick in his mouth, making it hard to swallow. He felt fever hot along his spine, and he just didn’t have enough information. The view in his sight was too distorted for him to take the shot. The lights in the corridor started flashing red – the silent alarm.

“Are you planning on turning me in or not?” Phil asked, calling over his shoulder as he started down the corridor again, heading for a stairwell. “Because if you are, I’m going to have to break up with you.”

“I thought you already broke up with me,” Clint replied as he followed. “I wasn’t worth the trouble, remember?”

“Well,” Phil said, pausing by the door. “I could be convinced to have coffee with you again.”

“Oh really?”

“Before the turning in and the removal of all of my personal freedoms, of course.”

“Of course,” Clint agreed.

“But I’d definitely break up with you after that.”

“I see.”

“I just think that trust is important in a relationship.”

Clint felt sick, a horrible response that had been trained into him as a child, when curling up and clutching his stomach had meant that he could hide in bed instead of sitting at the dinner table and seeing his parents fight, when laying low for longer than strictly necessary after a beating also meant that he could hide from the way Barney’s loaded gaze had pressed into the back of his neck. “I agree,” Clint said, his tongue thick in his mouth and his head pounding hard enough to make him dizzy.

Phil opened his mouth to say something more, but the door to the stairwell opened. Opened and Clint saw the black tactical uniforms and the neat lines of large guns, and he grabbed Phil instinctively. Grabbed Phil and pulled him close, turned his back on people who would undoubtedly be familiar to him under the functional anonymity of the tactical helmets. Clint shielded Phil with his body and hated that, even in a moment when his head was breaking apart and he had no one he could trust, Phil felt good in his embrace.

Clint felt the searing heat of a bullet biting into his shoulder, a fire that lit up his body and burned out his senses, and the dim world around him went white.

“Clint?” he heard Phil say, his voice coming from a distance. Clint wanted to tell Phil to get out, to make a run for it, but his throat was so dry and his mouth wouldn’t move. “Clint, you’re going to be okay.”

 _Ah,_ Clint thought as he felt something cool pressed to his face. _So that’s what he sounds like when he lies_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter, and to my cheerleaders over on twitter. Your feedback and support (and poking) has been invaluable to me while trying to get this instalment into shape :)

Clint woke up in a hospital room with a doctor standing over him and a needle in his arm. His heart was racing before his eyes were open, and he tired to lash out. Too late, his body passed the information up to his brain that his legs and wrists were strapped to the bed. Clint was not thrilled by this turn of events, and his made his distaste known, thrashing and biting even as he felt the sluggish crawl of a sedative working through his system, and many hands unstrapping him and flipping him onto his stomach. The bandages taped to the back of his right shoulder were pulled away, and Clint snarled at the feel of a sharp needle pricking the skin there.

“Don’t you… Don’t-” Clint’s arms were re-fastened to the frame of the hospital bed, though he made that process as difficult as he could despite his protesting body. A hand grasped his own, and Clint looked to the end of the bed, where Phil was crouching.

Phil gave him a stern look. “Are you ready to act like a big boy?” he asked pointedly, and Clint blinked at him in surprise. He looked around and it started to sink in that he was in a SHIELD facility. But why was Phil with him and not back in custody? What had happened? Phil nodded at someone outside Clint’s field of vision, and the sharp pricks of a needle injecting his shoulder returned. The skin there was already feeling detached, and Clint finally understood that a local anaesthetic was being administered. He felt nauseous, and his head was pounding, and the prickling burn at his shoulder was turning into an ache deep down in the muscle, curling around his ribs. Whatever they’d hit him with hadn’t been an ordinary bullet.

“Clint,” Phil said, squeezing his hand to get his attention. “Clint, I’m sorry but they needed you to be awake for this. It’s going to hurt a little, but I promise it won’t take very long.”

Clint gaped at Phil without comprehension. He heard someone say, “Start the application,” and then the room went silent except for the drip drip drip of liquid onto a soft surface. Something was burning, the unique smell of crackling flesh. Then slabs of information slowly collided in Clint’s fuzzy mind. 

He was burning. That was _his_ flesh searing away. 

His shoulder was a numb stretch on the surface but suddenly sensation stabbed through into the muscle. It felt like a rusty saw was being dragged across his ligaments. It felt like piano wire had been coiled around the top of his spine and was being yanked tight, like it was going to cut right through the bone and up into his skull. It felt like he was strapped down in a place that should have been safe to him while people who should have been looking after him burned right through his back and into his lungs.

“I’m sorry,” Phil said, stroking Clint’s hair even as Clint snarled and howled. “I’m sorry, but we’re nearly done.”

Clint would have broken Phil’s fingers if his own hands had been working, would have bitten through bone if only his face had been near enough for his teeth to tear Phil to shreds. His body was on fire and his brain felt like it was splitting down the middle, and Clint sobbed between breaths because he wasn’t even entirely surprised. 

Trusting people had only ever fucked him up.

“It’s okay,” Phil whispered as hands dug into the gaping wound that had once been Clint’s shoulder. “We’re so close, I promise.”

And then anonymous fingers touched something that turned Clint’s spine to razor wire, and Clint finally lost consciousness.

*

Clint woke up piece by piece. First he felt the coldness of his hands, and then the sick detachment of his back. Then he realised that his eyes were closed, and he struggled to open them. His world was flooded with light, and pain, and a deep feeling of unease that he couldn’t justify. Then he realised he was in a hospital room. A SHIELD medical facility with a long observation window running down one wall. Even with his blurry vision he could make out Phil standing on the other side of the window, turning and calling down the hallway. Clint squeezed his eyes shut and then blinked rapidly. He needed his vision to clear, but he felt dizzy and groggy and it was so very hard to keep his eyes open.

Clint woke again to the feeling of chemicals in his veins, a hot patch at the inside of his left elbow. He rolled his face in that direction with an incoherent noise of complaint, and forced his eyes open. Natasha stood at his side, the control for his drip in her hand. He tried to tell her that he’d already been punished enough, but his jaw and his brain weren’t on speaking terms, and his tongue felt too big for his mouth.

“It’s Friday,” Natasha said smoothly. “You were in a coma for four days, and you’ve been unconscious since the procedure yesterday.”

It wasn’t until those words filtered into his consciousness that Clint noticed the absence of pain, the absence of feeling. The smell of burning skin and the feeling of fire replacing the marrow in his ribs flooded his senses, making him retch. Natasha put a hand on the side of his neck, grounding him until the overload of harsh and violent memories started to fade.

He felt like shit. He felt like he had died and hadn’t even come back yet; like his body were a corpse and he was trapped inside it. Could he trust Natasha? Had she done this to him?

“You’re on a lot of medication right now,” Natasha said softly but clearly. “You were infected. Can you understand me, Clint?”

Clint squeezed his eyes shut and forced his mouth to work. “No,” he groaned. He felt Natasha huff a breath of air through her nose. He heard her fiddle with the control to his drip, and the vein at his inner elbow burned once more.

“Up and at ‘em,” Natasha said firmly as the head of Clint’s bed started to rise, propping him up into a sitting position. “Come on, Agent Barton. You’ve been asleep for days.”

Clint groaned again and rolled his head away from her. “Coma,” he mumbled, because that’s what she’d said and he was too lost in trying to rediscover his own body to allow her to change the story on him already. His mind was clearing though; whatever she was pumping into him was working. He furrowed his brow as their clumsy exchange finally sank in. “Coma?”

“Four days,” Natasha repeated. “And then a day in recovery.”

Clint opened his eyes and blinked blearily at the white ceiling above him. “Phil?”

“He’s fine,” Natasha replied. “He was out of quarantine back on Monday.”

Clint’s brow furrowed, because that didn’t make any damn sense. He looked over at Natasha, the motion of his head clumsy because his neck and shoulders were worryingly numb. “Shot,” he said, the soft start of the word slurring in his mouth.

Natasha gave Clint a small smile. “Nope.”

Clint considered her for a long moment. Even when everything had been crumbling around him, Natasha’s biggest slight had been her caution and her honesty. He still trusted her. Even when he was emotionally incoherent and intellectually disoriented, Natasha still stood out as the one stable element in a sea of change. 

But then, the faith Clint had in her was no secret. Even when her loyalties shifted, she was still Natasha, still had that quality about her that Clint had never been able to fight. He let the confusion show through on his face.

“Do you remember the fight in the park?” she asked. It took a moment, but Clint managed to call up vague memories. He nodded silently. “The horse-aliens?” she asked, prompting Clint’s memory. She waited for Clint to nod again before continuing. “Actually alien horses.” An important distinction that made Clint frown.

“No,” he said, because his brain was too still too sluggish to make the distinction between the two but he was certain there was one. He remembered the fight in the park, the noise and the destruction of it. 

“Alien horses that had been infected by an aggressive, semi-sentient fungus,” Natasha said firmly. “Can you remember the barbs they had? They scratched you up? That was fungus.” Clint considered that for a moment, then wrinkled his nose in disgust. “We’re pumping a lot of antifungal medication into you right now,” Natasha said with a small, perky smile. “You’re going to be feeling pretty awful for a while.”

Clint felt parts of his body relax. His back was largely numb, and his right arm had a pins-and-needles quality to it. He’d been shot and in the infirmary they’d discovered the infection? And while he’d been out of it Phil’s name had been cleared? But if Phil was in the clear then why was he still in a SHIELD facility? Clint was still struggling to swallow – it wasn’t fair of Natasha to make him work so hard.

The cocktail of chemicals in his system was doing its job – Clint was groggy and confused, but he could feel his neurons waking up. “So,” he managed to ask, his voice a thick mumble, “what happened?” 

“We figured something was up when Banner didn’t de-Hulk,” Natasha explained. “All those barbs in his hands had him pretty messed up, but his unique immune system kept the infection from spreading too quickly. Thor turned up late, as usual, but he recognised the fungus once he saw the horses. Apparently it’s pretty common in some of the other realms.” 

Natasha placed a hand on Clint’s wrist, on the strap of leather that restrained his hand, and slid two fingers against the edge of it, idly checking to make sure it was still tight. Ah, this would be bad news then. “It drags people down into a coma,” she said with neat detachment, “and when they wake up they’re berserk. About the time we started seeing less green on Banner, someone noticed that you were missing and so we buzzed you in case you were hit.”

“I remember that,” Clint said uncertainly. “I think.”

“Shortly after that your buzzcomm sounded the alert and I was sent out to drag your butt into medical. Where you should have gone as soon as you noticed you were wounded.”

“Yeah yeah,” Clint replied airily.

“Fungus,” Natasha said flatly. “Four day coma.”

Clint squeezed his eyes shut, the reality of it finally sinking in. “Four days?”

“Uh-huh. Thor thinks a lot of that was the fungus keeping you under so it could worm its way into your brain.”

Clint grimaced. “It can do that?”

“We’ve got the x-rays of it hugging your skull to prove it.” Clint wrinkled his nose, and made an effort to ignore the sharp pains across the base of his skull and running down his neck. He really didn’t need to think about fungus growing around his bones. 

“We’re going on the word of a Norse god and a dragon as far as your treatment goes, so it’s going to be an interesting ride for you and Banner. But you’re up for another brain scan tomorrow and the psych department is just salivating for the chance to talk to you.” Clint groaned again, and Natasha gave him a deeply unsympathetic look.

Clint rolled his head to one side and stared out of the observation window and into the hallway beyond. It was empty, but he didn’t believe that Phil could have gone far.

“What about him?” he asked. “He okay?”

“He’s fine,” Natasha replied. “Clean. Just in here visiting.”

Clint frowned. “No, I mean...” He trailed off as Natasha’s words sunk in. He was, after all, in a hospital bed in the SHIELD quarantine ward. Even the nurses needed two different swipe cards to get in. Phil wouldn’t be walking around if he were under suspicion. Even if Phil had a flawless record, he shouldn’t have been able to get past the front door “Visiting?” Clint repeated.

Natasha smiled them, bright and impish. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said, “especially not if Hill asks.” Which meant that Natasha knew everything about it. “But you should definitely get him to tell you _that_ story. He saved your butt.” She patted Clint’s wrist again. “Seriously. Babies. Think about it.”

Clint closed his eyes again and let out a long sigh, tension finally draining from his body. Phil was clean. Phil was safe. Whatever had gone on, Natasha was in Phil’s corner and that meant that Clint could relax, just for a moment. He felt light, like he was floating. He couldn’t feel sections of his body. His heartbeat was irregular. He was floating. He was restrained.

He had a _lot_ of drugs in his system. In retrospect, it was too early for relaxing.

“I’ll clear out and let you enjoy your visitor,” Natasha said. “That’s a treat we might not see again.”

Clint reached for her as he felt her moving away, his arm straining against the restraint at his wrist. Natasha paused and turned back to him, taking his hand in both of her own. He stared up at her as he lined the words up in his mind. They stuck in his throat, blocking his airway for a moment and Clint licked his lips to stall for time. He waited until he could look her in the eye, until he could catalogue every shift and twitch in her response before he asked, “Was I compromised?”

Natasha reached out and ran her fingers through his hair, which was thick and greasy after too many days without a proper shower. “By alien horse fungus,” she said, her hand resting on his cheek. “Nothing else.”

Clint pressed his face against her hand, nuzzling the familiar calluses at the top of her palm and the long, strong lines of her fingers. She tweaked his nose as she pulled her hand away, an obnoxiously fond gesture.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Clint replied. He even tried for a cocky grin, though he jaw was a little late on getting the memo. “Course.”

“Four days,” Natasha said sternly. “All because you wanted to go snuggle with your boyfriend.”

“Hey, to be fair, there’s every chance that I would have gone into a coma anyway,” Clint replied. 

Natasha stared at Clint with a flat lack of conviction. “I’m sure Director Fury will see it _exactly_ that way,” she said drily.

“Hey, can you... could you do me a favour?” Clint asked. “Off the record?” Natasha inclined her head to show that she was listening. “Could you look my brother up for me? Charles Bernard Barton.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow at Clint, giving him a long and silent assessment. Clint met her stare with tired resignation. Natasha could keep secrets; he could trust her with this much. Finally she nodded, and moved to unstrap his wrists from the bed. Clint wondered what he had done while he was out of it. Wondered exactly what kind of test he had just passed. 

“Fury is on site and on the prowl,” she said, her voice light and teasing, as if their previous exchange hadn’t happened. “So good luck.” Natasha flicked Clint’s right shoulder playfully, and he had to bite back a groan. That part of his body had been silent until that moment, and Natasha had prodded it into a small blossom of pain. She winked at Clint, and then gave him another hit of the painkiller and stimulant mix before leaving. 

Natasha was like the little sister Clint had never wanted and the annoying best friend he’d never needed. But she appeared moments later with Phil in tow, so at least she had good taste in ‘get well soon’ presents. 

Clint hadn’t realised the significance he’d placed on seeing Phil again until his boyfriend stepped into the room. He’d hoped that seeing Phil would cause pieces of lost memory to fall in place, would put everything in its right context. It didn’t. It just brought up all of the pain and the confusion lurking under the haze of chemical calm. Because the last day of Clint’s life had been pure hell because of Phil. Clint had gotten shot because... No. Clint frowned and tried to scrub his face with one hand, but he had a needle stuck into his left elbow and his right arm wasn’t cooperating. He scowled down at his body, at the uneven thud of his heart in his chest. He kept his eyes averted as Phil pulled a chair up to the side of Clint’s bed.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Phil said at last.

Clint kept his head down and glanced at Phil from the corners of his eyes. Phil looked tired. Tired and rumpled, which was a new combination as far as Clint was concerned. He had a charcoal sweater vest on over a white shirt, with a black and blue tie. He didn’t look exceptionally handsome, or particularly dangerous. He looked like he had been through a very long week, and was glad to be at the end of it. Four days. All because he’d chased Phil... No. 

“I, uh. I’m a little mixed up right now,” Clint admitted, his words slower than he would have liked, but clearer than they had been. 

“You’ve been asleep for days,” Phil said. He was holding one of Clint’s hands in both of his own. Clint curled his fingers, and Phil’s grip tightened.

“How... how do I know this isn’t...?” He wanted to tack ‘another dream’ on the end, but old habits kicked in and Clint bit the sentence off before he gave too much away. “This feels a little unreal,” he said instead.

“Well,” Phil said, leaning back a little once he was sure that Clint wasn’t going to collapse into death throes, “your mouth smells like something died in there, and your dick is taped into a catheter.”

Clint groaned low in his throat, and put some real energy into moving his tongue around his mouth. “Ugh. Embarrassing taste of reality,” he finally managed, and Phil laughed quietly. Clint forced his eyes open again and gazed at Phil. “Were you here the whole time?”

Phil rolled his eyes. “I do have a school to run,” he replied.

“Of course,” Clint replied. “I was just dying.”

The looks Phil gave him was filled with worry and fondness, and a thick slice of sadness. Clint wanted to tell Phil that he’d been kidding, that it hadn’t been serious at all, but his chest clenched, distracting him long enough for Phil to ask, “How are you feeling?”

Clint grimaced. “I feel bleh,” he replied.

“You’ve got a lot of chemicals in your system right now,” Phil replied. “Your heart rate kept climbing while you were out so they put you some kind of blocking drug for that. Then they needed you to wake up so that was a different lot of drugs. Also, you have an infection they’ve been doing everything to clean that out of you.”

Clint made a face. “It feels like my shoulder has been sanded to the bone.”

“Burned,” Phil clarified, and Clint gave him a mildly horrified look. “When I found out it was a fungus from another realm, I asked Boryn about it. In Svartalfheim it’s too cold for the plant to spread easily, so when a wyrm is infected they fall asleep and don’t wake up. The others in the nest can burn the fungus out.”

Clint titled his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “You brought your pet librarian in to breathe fire into me?”

Phil looked down at his own hands, wrapped around Clint’s. “Boryn can’t flame,” he said, sounding a little sheepish. “But, ah, the saliva of the average wyrm does have a strong combustible property.”

Clint lowered his gaze at Phil. “You rubbed wyrm spit into my shoulder,” he said slowly, “and then set it alight?”

“No,” Phil said, looking scandalised. “It was completely untested, and no one knew what it would do to you... They rubbed it into the _Hulk’s_ wounds and set it alight. When he stopped being Hulk-ish he was put to work on making it a little easier to control for you.” Phil frowned, toying with Clint’s thumb. “Boryn’s saliva ate through the canister it was being kept in. It was quite hard to purify.”

Clint grimaced. “I could have lived without knowing that last part.”

“They actually had to cut out a heap of burned muscle, once you’d passed out again.”

“Thanks, really. This is making me feel so much better.”

Phil frowned as he ran his thumb back and forth over Clint’s knuckles. “Don’t skip out on your medical next time,” he said quietly.

Clint stared at Phil, and Phil stared down at Clint’s hand and this, Clint was smart enough to pick, was going to be an issue. He cast around for an easier topic. “How’d you get in here to see me?” he asked, because that was certainly something he needed to know.

“I asked,” Phil said simply. “I asked _very_ nicely.”

Clint snorted. “You sure you’re not some kind of secret agent?” he asked. Phil laughed, and Clint didn’t have enough energy to explain that it wasn’t a joke. “What,” he started and then paused. He was at a poor vantage point, relying too much on intel from other sources. But you took what you could get and you got the job done. “How much of the last day actually happened?” he asked. “When I was with you?”

“We spent Sunday morning together,” Phil replied. “You fell asleep waiting for pizza and wouldn’t wake up.”

“And you used my buzzcomm?”

Phil nodded. “I also got pants on you.”

Clint considered that. “Thanks. So the shower, that happened?” Phil reached up and pulled the collar of his shirt to one side. He had a love bite low on his neck, green and brown where in Clint’s memory it had been a dark purple and red. Phil had an odd little smile on his face, a fond and amused look made wry by the tired set of his face. “And you have a tattoo?” Clint pressed on.

Phil nodded. “You fell asleep while we were talking about it.”

Wonderful news, but painfully convenient. Clint had every reason to believe it, but waking up in the hospital was the part that felt unreal. Phil was watching him, waiting for a response and Clint pulled himself together.

“Steve is really boring,” he told Phil, a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. Phil didn’t return his smile, just ran his thumb back and forth across the back of Clint’s hand. Clint didn’t know how to react, having someone so overtly concerned about him. For him. “I had strange dreams,” he admitted at last. 

Phil squeezed Clint’s hand. “You should tell me about them sometime.”

“No,” Clint replied. “I think I’m going to keep these ones to myself.”

An awkward silence stretched between them. Clint wasn’t used to awkward silences. Silence was usually his strength. But he wasn’t used to visitors and worry. He wasn’t used to not trusting his own memories. “I’m glad you’re okay,” Phil said at last.

“Are you okay?” Clint asked. “Tasha said you’ve had an interesting time.”

“Well, let’s see,” Phil said. “I got escorted out of my building by men in black and held in an undisclosed location for a day.” Clint’s heart thudded in his chest, and he fought to keep his face blank. “Then I got sent home with a clean bill of health, only to find out that my secretary had registered me as a missing person because I hadn’t been able to call in sick for Monday. So I had to deal with the police, and then the ridiculous number of messages in my voice mail. And then I discovered that Mittens had peed on the sofa while I was gone.”

Clint relaxed. It was easier to listen to Phil ranting, to hear all of the things that had happened while Clint’s world had been falling apart. Clint struggled with concern, but annoyance was a familiar tool and he was able to smile with a little honesty as Phil talked.

“- and by then you were thrashing around so much they decided there just wasn’t any more time, so they had you strapped down.” Phil was trying to hide his emotions, but Clint could see the distress on his face. Phil visibly pulled his thoughts to other topics. “We were late to Boryn’s meeting with the asylum tribunal for the state of New York.”

“How did that go?” Clint asked.

“Good, I think. Director Fury had a few words with the panel. I think we had a pretty good case for pjr to be granted residency for the moment.”

“That’s good,” Clint said. He wondered if that meant he’d have to be nice to the damn thing now. He could probably manage it if Boryn had learned that ‘no means no’ when it came to hugs. “It looks like it all turned out pretty well,” Clint said, aiming for upbeat.

Phil rubbed the pad of his thumb back and forth against the side of Clint’s knuckle. He looked tired, and worried, and worn. “It could have been worse,” he said at last.

Clint thought about Phil locked away in Base B, about the violence and fear, the shape of guns being aimed at them and the feeling of heat tearing into his shoulder. He squeezed Phil’s hand, and his chest ached when Phil squeezed back. “That’s true,” Clint said. “It could have.”

Phil gave him a half smile, worry slowly replaced with relief. “We were both pretty lucky.”

Clint closed his eyes and relaxed back against his pillow. His shoulder hurt, and in that odd, easy moment between dream and reality it felt like a gunshot wound. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he said softly. Because that had been the truth. And it would take Clint a while to adjust his sights, but that was a constant shape in the landscape for him to navigate by.

Phil lifted Clint’s hand, and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I’ve got to go,” he said quietly. “Visiting hours are over, and you need to rest up.”

“Thanks for dropping by,” Clint said, his eyes still closed. 

Phil gave Clint’s hand one last squeeze before letting go. “Call me,” he instructed.

Clint forced his eyes open, and snapped off the sloppiest salute of his career, his left hand not even getting close to his face due to the combination of sluggish limbs and the sharp awkwardness of the needle still in place at his elbow. “Aye aye, sir.”

Phil shook his head, though he didn’t hide the small smile on his face, and left the room. Clint was glad to see him go. As much as he liked Phil, as much as he appreciated the implications of Phil being there when he woke up, Clint was uncertain about too many things. There was too much time missing and too many things still unexplained. Clint managed to bring a hand up and scrub his face. He needed to regroup. He needed to get the hell away and figure out what was going on in his head.

Clint opened his eyes again and looked through the observation window stretching down one wall of his room. Fury stood in the hallway, watching Phil leave. Clint heard the elevator at the end of the hall chime, and when Phil was presumably out of sight Fury turned to Clint and raised an eyebrow.

Clint had no idea how to respond to the silent question, so he lay back and hoped that he would be allowed to sleep without dreams.


End file.
